Before the season, FreeDarko revisited Hakeem Olajuwon’s assertion that he was a better player during Ramadan. Hannukah isn’t exactly the Jewish equivalent of Ramadan. It’s shorter (8 days vs. 30), doesn’t involve fasting, and isn’t the most important holiday in the Jewish faith. Still, it’s the first major Jewish holiday to come up since Stoudemire’s declaration that he’s maybesort of kind of Jewish, so I thought it would be worth exploring if his play improved during the festival of lights. Call it the “Hannukah Effect”. FreeDarko dispelled the myth in Olajuwon’s case, finding no significant jump in his productivity during Ramadan. Let’s see what the stats say for Amar’e.

Look, I told them a thousand times I don’t ball on Shabbos.

We’ll look at Amar’e’s Hannukah stats for this year only (games played between sunset December 1st and sunset December 9th), since it was only this summer that he went to Israel to explore his roots and this whole hoopla began.

The Hannukah Effect. Doubt it at your peril.

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